don't play any of your discs more than once a month and
play it no more than twice

YIKES!

Why?

Do the bits go stale? This is a digitally encoded stamped (OK, pressed,
but at the speed with which they are made, stamped describes it better)
medium, covered in hard plastic, and played by a method that does not
physically touch the encoded information. Unless one is dealing with a
pretty wretched CD transport, and/or filthy handling habits, there is
no theoretical limit to how many times they can be played within a
given period.... and if they do wear out (which is starting to happen
with some of the earliest-made discs), the failure is
materials-related, not use-related.

Someone has GOT to be kidding, likely the same person that passed the
rumor that a green magic marker (or was it blue) makes CDs sound
better... And on the outer rim for crissakes... when they program and
play from the center out, and last I heard of a specific brand!

Why/how does stuff like this get started, and who believes it when it
does, and why? Does some joker have a hot-flash in the middle of a
lonely night and decide how -he- will roil the audiophool world this
time?

Lemme see, in the last several months:

Little towers for raising speaker wire.
Cryogenically treated _____ (tubes, receptacles, interconnects, even
wooden speaker pads)
Full-range single drivers. Define "full" and "range".
Orienting components to the magnetic field.
Orienting components to True North.
Orienting components to Magnetic fields generated in the listening
room.

I do know that vinyl is not at all happy with repeated and
close-in-time playings, if one calculates the force of the stylus in
the groove, figuring 1gm over ~0.005" by 0.00015" as an elipse, bearing
on the vinyl across an area of about 0.00015 x 0.004 x 2 comes to some
1860 pounds per square inch, for round figures. And in this case we
have a diamond (pretty hard) impacting on plastic anywhere from 20 to
20,000 times per second in a grove moving at an average of 12 inches
per second, more or less. Some heat is generated. The diamond is just
fine with the heat, it's seen worse. The vinyl is not, if repeatedly
abused.

But, guys and gals, the laser does not touch the substrate. And the
heating/cooling issues are substantially different as are the
degrade-results.

Or am I completely missing something? Remember, we Americans have NO
sense of humor.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA